Fall 1995: Lawyer for Accused Oklahoma City Bomber Tells University Audience Government’s Actions at Waco Tied to Bombing

Stephen Jones, the court-appointed lawyer who is defending accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see May 8, 1995), speaks at the University of Oklahoma. Jones, who intends to argue that a group of unnamed conspirators, perhaps members of America’s far-right militias (see 1983, January 23, 1993 - Early 1994, April 1993, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, August 1994 - March 1995, August - September 1994, September 12, 1994 and After, September 13, 1994 and After, November 1994, December 1994, February 1995, March 1995, (April 1) - April 18, 1995, April 5, 1995, April 8, 1995, and Before 9:00 A.M. April 19, 1995), carried out the bombing and not his client, talks about the impact the case has had on his personal life, and also about the emergence of the dangerous radical right. Jones will argue that if McVeigh did indeed have something to do with the bombing, this radical right had an undue and controlling influence on him. “There are a large number of individuals whom people on the two coasts would refer to as the far right, the fringe group, the militia community,” he says. “At least in the interior of the country, the views of these individuals on subjects as diverse as taxation, the jury system, government regulations, police power, the schools, the family, gun control, corruption, and citizen militia represent not the fringe but increasingly the mainstream.” This “increasingly mainstream” political and social movement, Jones says, has been sparked “not just [by] a dissatisfaction with the government of the day, but a more deep-seated resentment under the circumstances and with the immediate backdrop of Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992) and Waco (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). Waco and Oklahoma City have this in common: they have increased the polarization between inpenitent federal officials and disenfranchised social groups such as bankrupt farmers and ranchers and a dislocated working class. One common thread that ties Waco and Oklahoma City together is the shared outrage of the federal government’s failure to acknowledge the full extent of their responsibility for Waco.… Little wonder then that Tim McVeigh, along with millions of other people, shares the outrage of the blunder at Waco.” Jones says that McVeigh is not the monster the media has portrayed him to be (see June 26, 1995). “That is not the Tim McVeigh I have come to know,” he says. McVeigh does not lack faults: “He is well read, but he lacks formal disciplinary training. Simply because he wrote in for information on a variety of controversial political subjects no more makes him a bigot or a neo-Nazi or a racist than the fact that when I was in high school I went to the Soviet embassy and for three years subscribed to Soviet Life magazine makes me a Communist.” He concludes that the case “has the drama of a great trial,” and though his intention in giving this speech is not “to magnify my office… it is hardly possible, for the reasons I have stated tonight, to exaggerate the importance of this case and what it means for our country. Someday when you know what I know and what I have learned, and that day will come, you will never again think of the United States of America in the same way.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 252-254]